Chromatography is an analytical technique for separating components of a chemical mixture. Chromatography may be used for the identification, extraction, and purification of species of interest, for example proteins, peptides, nucleic acids, monoclonal antibodies, or other species of interest in biological research and analysis, or drug manufacturing. Chromatography may be used in many other applications as well. These techniques have reached such a high level of sophistication that virtually any biological species can be obtained in a highly purified form.
However, different species may require different processes for isolation, for example different sample preparation methods, different separation media, and different conditions under which separation is performed. Accordingly, configurable chromatography systems have been developed, in which varying components may be selected and interconnected in varying ways for the performance of different separations.